Home Categories Miscellaneous A Shifting Dynamic In MMA
A Shifting Dynamic In MMA
Written by Brad Taschuk   
Thursday, 14 January 2010 10:29
The longer one watches MMA the more one notices changes in the sport, which is nothing new, as that much is obvious in any sport. However, when looking at a sport like Mixed Martial Arts -- which for all intents and purposes is still a fledgling sport -- the change becomes that much more apparent, and much more far reaching in terms of how competition plays out. One of the old axioms of MMA, going all the way back to the very beginnings of the UFC, is that "The Octagon" (or any cage for that matter) was a fighting confine that favoured the grappler. In the early days of the sport, this couldn't have been more true, yet that may have been due to the sizeable advantages Jiu-Jitsu artists and wrestlers held over their competition in their specific disciplines, and less about the cage itself.

In recent times, there seems to have been a shifting dynamic in MMA, where now the cage seems to promote stand-up battles (or amateur level kickboxing matches, some might argue), while the ring -- which was always a haven for strikers -- now appears more grappler-friendly. Let's explore why this fundamental shift in MMA has taken place.

Before you dismiss this as a foolhardy argument, and point out that the ring still provides better angles and a smaller fighting area (both things which would seem to favour strikers), it begrudges you to read on.

With the way wrestling has developed in an MMA setting, fighters are now far better at using the cage to defend takedowns, where the exact same cage used to be a liability to staying on their feet. Technically, all it really took was fighters learning basic Greco-Roman wrestling skills (for instance, how to work for underhooks) and them being taught how to drop their hips into the cage, consequently making things much more difficult for their opponents to grab easy takedowns along the fence. Taking this point to an extreme, look at B.J. Penn. The Hawaiian has the uncanny ability to find his way to the cage on almost every takedown attempt tried against him. He uses the cage to set up a wide base, and once he's established it, he peels off one of his opponent's hands from his legs (usually the left hand from the right leg), forcing them to attempt a single leg takedown. Anyone who has listened to Joe Rogan for 15 seconds during a Penn fight knows that B.J. has "incredible balance, insane flexibility and crazy dexterity," and this makes B.J. almost impossible to takedown --unless you're the best wrestler in MMA and also hold a 20lb weight advantage over him. Not every fighter is B.J. Penn though, and not all of them can use those skills to avoid being taken down the vast majority of the time.


Luckily for those fighters, the cage being used as an aid in takedown defense isn't the biggest factor in this changing dynamic. The progression of the "wall walk" -- which initially meant literally using one's back to sort of roll-up the cage back to the standing position -- has meant that the majority of takedowns against the cage, which is where the preponderance of takedowns still occur due to the wrestling ineptitude of many fighters, are almost immediately nullified. In addition, fighters are now far better schooled in their cage positioning and when they get taken down, most of them try to slide as close to the cage as possible, a move which would have been considered a death trap only years ago. The purpose of moving towards the cage is to utilize the ability to wall walk and return to the feet. It's rather simple really. Sit on a floor in open space and try to stand-up using no hands, then do the same near a wall, using the wall for support.  It's much easier to stand up with the help of the wall, especially if you've got another person's weight on top of you. Fighters and trainers are (for the most part) intelligent people, and they figured this out and then devised ways to best use this tactic.

This idea isn't exactly a new concept in Mixed Martial Arts, as Maurice Smith was using the cage to help him get up from his back in the 20-something events, and Chuck Liddell has always been very adept at standing-up from the bottom via the cage. However, in recent years it seems that using the cage to aid a fighter on the bottom, rather than on top has become far more of the norm. In fact, this seems to be one of the first things taught to fighters these days in terms of a defensive ground game, and many guys are perfecting the skill. In addition to the natural progression of basic defensive wrestling techniques (re: improved takedown defense) of most fighters, this means that: 1) Most fighters can avoid being taken down in open space, forcing their opponent to move them to the cage, and 2) When they do get taken down against the cage, they can easily pop back up, completely nullifying the potential ground attack of their opponent.

Of course, there are still examples of fighters who have a skill set which transcends these general trends. For instance, Georges St. Pierre has the wrestling, and more importantly, the finishing ability on his takedowns to take fighters down in the middle of the cage, where he can work his top game. Demian Maia and Jacaré both have the skills on the ground that they can pull guard or sweep from almost anywhere on the canvas, controlling where the fight takes place and imposing the ground game upon their opponents. These types of athletes are becoming fewer and farther between, however, and anyone who watches MMA has likely noticed the bulk of fights these days taking place on the feet, with the ground games of all but the best wrestlers and grapplers being nullified.

Just to quickly look at the other side of the coin, since the focus of this article was the changes that have taken place in the cage, the ring has always offered a better ability to sprawl due to not having a solid barrier as exists in a cage. Nonetheless, a traditional wrestling sprawl still initiates the ground game, whether it results in a scramble or the individual being sprawled upon pulling guard, more so than defending a takedown against the fence in a cage does. That, combined with the restarts on the ground which place fighters on the ground in the center of the ring (an obviously more advantageous position for grapplers) means that the ring is more suited in today's MMA game for fighters who prefer to grapple, potentially even making it a more balanced fighting area than the cage moving forward in the sport (although the cage has become synonymous with Mixed Martial Arts in our culture, and that isn't likely to change anytime soon).

Still, this is mixed martial arts, and the very nature of the sport is that almost anything can work in any setting. These are just some recent tendencies that have stuck out more and more as the skill level of fighters has advanced.